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Language in Learning at Thursday Island High Schoo1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2015

Anna Shnukal
Anna Shnukal*
Affiliation:
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit, The University of Queensland
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Extract

Last year I was approached by the Thursday Island High School in Torres Strait to analyse the major linguistic differences between Standard English and Torres Strait Creole – the language of the majority of the students – insofar as these affect the students' comprehension and production of written English texts. In this, the High School was responding to a request by its Management Committee and general concern about the students' acquisition of English literacy.

Type
Section D: Research
Information
The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , 09/10 1996 , pp. 42 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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Footnotes

1

This paper is a shortened version of a 40-page consultancy report on the Torres Strait Creole Project, Thursday Island High School, written for the Thursday Island High School. It appears with the kind permission of the school. The research which led to the report was iunded by the Queensland Department of Education, Peninsula Region, and carried out on Thursday Island by the author between 13 November and 9 December 1995. The bulk of the report deals with linguistic differences between Torres Strait Creole and Australian English, which are briefly summarised here.

References

Shnukal, Anna (1988) Broken: An Introduction to the Creole Language of Torres Strait. Pacific Linguistics C-107.Google Scholar
Shnukal, Anna (1982) ‘Why Torres Strait “Broken English” is not English’. In Bell, Jeanie (Ed.), Aboriginal Languages Association: A Collection of Papers from the Second Annual Workshop of the ALA, Batchelor, 4-7 April 1982. Alice Springs, IAD, pp. 25–35. (Slightly revised version published as Nungalinya Occasional Bulletin 20 (1985), as Wontulp Occasional Bulletin 6 (1985), and in Aboriginal Perspectives on Experience and Learning, a tertiary level study guide published by Deakin University (1985).)Google Scholar
Nakata, Martin (1995) ‘Cutting a better deal for Torres Strait Islanders’. The Aboriginal Child at School 23(3): 20–27.Google Scholar
Lawrie, Margaret (Ed.) (1970) Myths and Legends of Torres Strait. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press.Google Scholar